Jeremy Quin
Main Page: Jeremy Quin (Conservative - Horsham)Department Debates - View all Jeremy Quin's debates with the HM Treasury
(9 years, 1 month ago)
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Kate Osamor
May I make some progress?
Martin Taylor, a member of the Bank of England’s federal policy committee, said:
“I would like to have a feeling that the Government recognises there are policy options and is thinking along those lines rather than saying our job is to get the business back into the private sector.”
Unfortunately, the rushed nature of the sale, the lack of evidence provided to support it and the lack of discussion surrounding it suggests that the contrary is the case.
The Government’s decision to sell off RBS shares in the summer without any published evidence that they have considered alternative options raises important questions about public accountability and process. It signals a return to business as usual and an unquestioning faith that the private sector is the right direction for British banking.
The Chancellor argued that it was the
“right thing to do for the taxpayer and for British businesses”
and that the sale
“would promote financial stability, lead to a more competitive banking sector, and support the interests of the wider economy.”
To support those claims, the Government have relied on a 13-page report by the investment bank, Rothschild, and a two-page letter from the Governor of the Bank of England. Neither of those presents any concrete evidence to support the Chancellor’s assertion. Opposition to the sale has been voiced by the public, hon. Members and independent voices in the field. Nearly 120,000 people have signed a petition calling for an independent review of the options for the bank’s future before any shares are sold.
A survey commissioned by Move Your Money shows that only 21% of people agree with the current conditions of the share sale; 82% agree that RBS should act in the public interest and 67% agree that we should have a full independent review. Many alternative options have been put forward for RBS, including breaking it up into a series of challenger banks, turning it into a state investment bank and converting it into a network of local or regional banks.
I want to focus on the last of those options, which has been advocated by, among others, the New Economics Foundation, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Civitas, Respublica and the former Treasury Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey). It is modelled not on an untested economic theory but on the German Sparkassen, a network of local public savings banks owned in trust for the public benefit, accountable to local people and with a mandate to support their local economies. The Sparkassen are the powerhouse of small business lending in Germany and are an important part of the success story of the German economy.
The NEF has proposed that RBS could be broken into 130 local banks based on local authority areas, of a similar size to the Sparkassen. They would be carved out of the bank’s high street operations, with its investment banking and private banking arms being sold. Like the Sparkassen, they would be able to share risks and resources to achieve economies of scale but, crucially, each local bank would be independent. By refusing to consider this option, the Government are missing a golden opportunity to fix the structural problems of UK banking that were exposed in the crisis.
Jeremy Quin (Horsham) (Con)
I hope that the hon. Lady would accept that the German banking system also had its problems during the financial crisis. The Sparkassen to which she refers were often lending very inappropriately, which helped to pump up the credit bubble, and they were investing in southern Europe in a way that helped to cause the eurozone crisis.
Kate Osamor
The hon. Gentleman’s example covers what happened in a short period of time. Over a long period, the system has been tested and has worked, so I beg to disagree.
The UK has the most concentrated and homogenous banking sector in the developed world. Just 3% of our banking system is locally controlled, compared with two thirds of that in Germany. We are also uniquely reliant on shareholder-owned banks at the expense of other ownership models. This lack of diversity makes us uniquely vulnerable to financial crises. To put it simply, it makes it more likely that our banks will all suffer the same problems at the same time, as they did in 2008.
Breaking up RBS and localising our banking system would make us more resilient to future shocks. Local banks also provide a means through which we can rebalance the economy, as the UK has the most regionally unbalanced economy of any European country. Studies find that local banks in other countries help prevent capital from being sucked into big cities, and spread jobs and lending more evenly across the country. This change would also ensure that more people had access to bank branches. Whereas commercial banks are shutting at an increasingly rapid rate across the country and in Europe, local banks in Europe have prioritised maintaining good access for their customers.
Local French co-operatives, for example, typically locate between 25% and 33% of their branches in sparsely populated areas. Local banks also lend more to the real economy, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises. That would greatly benefit my constituency of Edmonton and those across the country who struggle to obtain loans. That is made possible not just by the banks’ local focus but by their ownership structure and public interest mandate. Across Europe, banks run for more than profit devote 66% of their balance sheets to high street banking, compared with just 37% for commercial banks, which tend to lend for more profitable activities, such as derivatives trading. Local banks could therefore reduce our vulnerability to crisis, help rebalance the economy and boost the real economy. Analysis from the NEF suggests that that should have been done in 2008, as UK GDP could have benefited from an immediate boost of £7.1 billion, with an additional £30.5 billion over three years. Reforming RBS is in the interests of the taxpayer and the economy.
I want to end with a statement from the Tomlinson report, which highlights how selling off RBS shares represents a wasted opportunity for significant publicly beneficial reform in UK banking:
“Returning RBS and Lloyds to full private sector ownership in their current form would be a return to the banking landscape of 2003, possibly with even less competition…Given the lack of any real change in the banking sector, there is nothing that will stop 2018 being the same as 2008 unless radical action is taken now.”
Without reform of any banking structures, there is a risk we could witness another crash.
We must learn from the events of 2008. By failing to provide evidence justifying the sale and to consider alternative options, the Government are putting ideology above what is best for the economy and the taxpayer. I ask the Government to conduct an independent review of all the alternative options and urge Members on both sides of the House to support the motion.
Jon Cruddas (Dagenham and Rainham) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton (Kate Osamor) on introducing this important debate and thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting time for it. My take on the motion is fairly simple: what is there not to like? It suggests that the Government should
“consider suspending the further sale of its shares in the Royal Bank of Scotland”
and calls for
“a wider review of the UK’s financial sector”,
including
“the case for establishing new models of banking, including regional banks.”
That suggests a mixed economy in the banking sector that does not simply result in a massive loss to the taxpayer—some suggest as big a hit to the public purse as £14 billion.
That does not seem to me to be an especially political suggestion. Indeed, organisations on the right of the political spectrum such as Civitas and ResPublica have suggested turning RBS into a network of local banks, and regulators such as Adam Posen and Martin Taylor have also suggested turning it into smaller challenger banks. The motion therefore appears sensible and not particularly political, so I find talk of abstention quite strange.
In my brief contribution I want to make a few points about the question of alternative ownership models. As far as I can see—my hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton pointed this out—there appears to be a distinct lack of evidence for the Government’s assertion that banks perform better when located solely within the private sector. I want to point out evidence suggesting that other ownership models—what we might term “stakeholder banks”—should have a role to play in fixing our broken banking system.
My basic departure point is this: as far as I can see, in justifying their policy on RBS, the Government have leaned heavily on a two-page letter from the Governor of the Bank of England, which states that
“all the evidence suggests that commercial organisations are more efficient, more innovative and more effective”
in the private sector, and that a privately owned banking system is
“best able to allocate capital efficiently and competitively to grow jobs, investment, and income”.
That is pretty clear and unequivocal, so let us start with some basic questions.
Where is the evidence for those assertions? Neither the Government, nor the Bank has provided any. When questioned, the Minister has simply pointed back to the Governor’s letter, which appears to be a pretty lazy feedback loop. It is not really good enough when we are talking about the future of a major national asset, one of the UK’s biggest banks, with huge implications for our economy and the resilience of our financial system, and indeed our livelihoods and those of our constituents.
Were we to listen only to the Government, we would think that there is simply no alternative to an economy dominated by large, privately owned banks, except perhaps some kind of monolithic Government bureaucracy—a simple either/or choice between a big shareholder bank and a big state bank. However, there is a whole range of other ownership models that work in other countries, from local savings banks accountable to local communities, such as the German Sparkassen, to co-operatives, mutuals and state investment banks.
Actually, as far as I can see, it is the UK that is the odd one out, because it relies exclusively on shareholder-owned banks. For example, research by the New Economics Foundation has found that nearly two thirds of German bank deposits are with so-called “stakeholder banks”. In France the proportion is about 50%, and in the Netherlands it is around 40%. In the UK it is just over 10%, the lowest of almost any developed economy.
Jeremy Quin
Does the hon. Gentleman accept that building societies also suffered from problems through the crash? We had our own equivalents in this country, and I am afraid that they fared no better than some of our major banks.
Jon Cruddas
I will come to the question of demutualisation in a moment. I simply suggest that Government Members read a book called “The New Few” by Ferdinand Mount, who happened to be Margaret Thatcher’s head of policy. He argued for a more resilient capitalism, including a mixed economy in banking provision, with mutuals, local regional banks and a wider distribution of banking products for communities such as mine in east London. Therefore, I do not think that this is necessarily a left-right debate. I argue that this is a live debate on the right, which suggests that simple neutrality or abstention on the motion is not necessarily going with the grain of more innovative thinking across the right of the political spectrum.
Jon Cruddas
My hon. Friend is exactly right, so let us talk about stakeholder banks and look at some of the evidence. I refer colleagues to the NEF document “Reforming RBS” and some of its findings. First, stakeholder banks tended to be better capitalised and less volatile before the crisis, and they were less exposed to the risky and speculative activities that caused it. Co-operative banks suffered just 8% of the total losses incurred during the banking crisis, despite accounting for around a fifth of the European banking market. To put that in context, HSBC alone was responsible for 10% of those losses. Secondly, stakeholder banks were also more likely to keep lending after the crisis. In fact, German public savings banks, Swiss cantonal banks and credit unions in the US and Canada all kept expanding their lending to businesses right through the crisis and the resulting recession.
Jeremy Quin
Does the hon. Gentleman accept that our own experience with the Co-operative bank has not been that happy?
Jeremy Quin (Horsham) (Con)
The number of compliments paid to Royal Bank of Scotland over the past few years has not been such to overtax the Hansard reporters, and I have no doubt that today’s debate will be no different. I have huge sympathy with my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (William Wragg) and the experience of his constituent. We will all have constituents with similar issues—I certainly do—and it is absolutely right that these things should be focused on and that the lessons from the mistakes must be learned. I am trying to take up the challenge of the hon. Member for Dagenham and Rainham (Jon Cruddas) by presenting an alternative viewpoint in addressing the subject of the debate that I congratulate the hon. Member for Edmonton (Kate Osamor) on securing.
As the Register of Members’ Financial Interests points out, I have had some familiarity with this sector. I therefore think it is appropriate that we at least acknowledge the huge transformation that has happened inside RBS over the past few years. With the encouragement of United Kingdom Financial Investments Ltd and my right hon. Friend the Chancellor, it has taken serious actions. It has dramatically shrunk its investment bank, and that will be welcomed in many parts of this House. It has sold off its overseas assets, getting rid of Citizens Financial Group in the US, and it is sorting out the mismanagement of the past. It is investing in IT systems finally to bring together the amalgamation of all the banks that form the business. With its capital now at 16%, I very much hope that it is now in the position that we all want to see whereby it can really drive lending into the UK economy and support our small and medium-sized enterprises.
Grahame M. Morris
The hon. Gentleman is setting out an alternative view that RBS has changed and been reformed, but did not the LIBOR exchange rate-rigging scandal happen after it became a publicly owned bank? Has anything fundamentally changed in the bonus culture that drives such risk-taking and does not support jobs in the real economy?
Jeremy Quin
I acknowledge and appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s point. I would have a much better case if I could say that all the problems were pre-crisis, but they were not; I fully acknowledge that. There are clearly issues that were endemic in RBS’s culture, and I sincerely hope that it has got a grip on that now.
RBS certainly does have a grip on its corporate structure and how it is conducting its business. It is now far more focused back on the UK and on UK corporate lending. It is the largest single lender to UK corporates, the largest supporter of SMEs, and the largest provider of mortgage lending. That is what we all want to see and wanted to see when the stake was initially taken.
Clive Lewis (Norwich South) (Lab)
The hon. Gentleman is saying that RBS has changed and improved its culture, but in The Times this week there was an article suggesting that it has been falsifying the mis-selling data that it has been giving out. I wonder what has actually changed if it is still misbehaving and, in effect, telling these porkies. Surely, in that case, it has not reformed itself and is just the same as it always has been.
Jeremy Quin
I have a lot of faith in the regulatory system that Ministers have put in place over the past five or six years under the coalition Government and this Government. What we need to focus on, as a House, is ensuring that we have the regulatory system that will deliver the results for our constituents and for the broader UK economy. I am nervous that the motion proposed by the hon. Member for Edmonton, although well intentioned, would delay support going into the economy.
I was serving in the Treasury when the stake in RBS was originally taken. I know that no hon. Member would be under any illusion that that stake was ever taken in a leisurely manner with a view to getting a tidy investment. The decision was taken by Labour with the very best of intentions, and it was the right decision to support the UK economy and the UK banking system at an absolutely critical moment.
George Kerevan (East Lothian) (SNP)
Given the hon. Gentleman’s experience at the time, does he agree that there is still nevertheless an onus on the Treasury to ensure that the money paid out in acquiring RBS is paid back in full to the taxpayer?
Jeremy Quin
I understand the attraction of that argument. The hon. Gentleman is an economist of fine standing, and his point, which was also made by the hon. Member for Edmonton, is one to which we would all like the answer yes, but it is not as simple as that. The reality is that the value of a share is what people are prepared to pay for it. We know what the value of RBS is at present. A lot of actions were taken within RBS that might have been right for the UK economy but not have added to the value of the share price. If we are expecting RBS to act in the interests of the UK, that may not always be right for their share price.
Jeremy Quin
I will, but let me make one final point in rebutting the point made by hon. Member for East Lothian (George Kerevan), and then I am sure the hon. Gentleman will have another go. The Rothschild report is thorough—it is bigger than the two pages produced by the Governor of the Bank of England—and sets out why the taxpayer can expect to at the very least break even and probably make an overall profit on their investment in the banking system. That is a remarkable achievement, given that back in 2009, when the Labour party was in government, the Treasury was talking about a £20 billion to £50 billion loss.
George Kerevan
I thank the hon. Gentleman for letting me back in. I simply asked him whether he felt, given his experience, that the goal should be to try to maximise the return to the taxpayer, given what they put in. I accept they might not get it all back, but should not the goal be to maximise the return to the shareholder, who is the taxpayer?
Jeremy Quin
Of course, we must maximise the returns, but we must do so in the context of the broader picture for the UK. I acknowledge that the banking system is incredibly important to our economy, including what it can provide to the real economy.
Jeremy Quin
I will give way briefly to my hon. Friend, but I know that other Members want to speak.
Mr Baker
I am most grateful to my hon. Friend. Having listened to the debate, one of my advisers has texted me to say that according to the International Monetary Fund, as retrospectively analysed by Ewald Engelen et al, the taxpayer cost of saving the banking system was £500 billion, which is way more than the equity injected into it. Has my hon. Friend taken into account the IMF’s calculations, and does he think we will get that £500 billion?
Jeremy Quin
I am grateful for the wisdom and insight that has flashed on to my hon. Friend’s machine. His staff are very attentive and I look forward to them providing me with the IMF report so that I can go through it in great detail. I look forward to discussing it with him later. I am being intervened on from all sides. My hon. Friend makes me take on board the £500 billion mentioned by the IMF, while the hon. Member for East Lothian (George Kerevan) simply wants us to hit the five pounds tuppence per share. I am being pulled in different directions, but we all agree that RBS needs to be productive for the real economy.
That takes me to the heart of the motion tabled by the hon. Member for Edmonton. The long-delayed and long-drawn-out splitting off of Williams & Glyn from RBS has cost billions and taken a huge amount of management time. With the best will in the world, splitting up such organisations takes time, effort and money. I am really concerned that it could be an unnecessary distraction to try to pull a bank in as many as 130 different directions, as the hon. Lady proposes. I fear that the creation of multiple banks will lead to multiple dis-synergies and create entities that will find it much harder to access capital markets. It could be a very costly distraction and I am very nervous that it would not act in the interests of the broader economy. There are advantages that flow from a large, well-capitalised and well-regulated bank being able to spread its assets across the UK.
Although I wish the initial public offering of the Clydesdale and Yorkshire Bank well, if it goes ahead in the new year, I fear that investors prefer the spread of banks across asset classes and across the whole of the UK, rather than regional entities. One only needs to remember the passion in this place regarding the steel industry to recognise how a major problem can have a ripple effect on small and medium-sized enterprises locally and cause huge problems for a regional economy. I fear that capital markets would reflect those risks in a higher cost of capital and scarce resources, particularly in those very areas of the country where we all wish to see the maximum amount of lending.
Catherine West
It think we could be convinced if the number of loans being given to small businesses since 2008 had rocketed. Instead it is flat because, quite rightly, the banking sector is looking inwards, although that is not to be encouraged. What incentive can Government policy create to make banks lend to the small businesses that keep our constituencies going?
Jeremy Quin
I will make a negative point and a positive point. On the negative side, I do not think that tackles my concern that smaller banks would have higher costs of capital and scarcer resources, making them less able to lend to smaller businesses. I think the hon. Lady would agree—my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove certainly would—that there is still a huge crisis in confidence in the major banks, and the last thing a lot of small businesses want to do is ask for a loan, because they are worried about the rug being pulled from underneath them. That process is going to take years to address.
Internationally, I do not think that the United States, given its overall funding strategies and the use of capital markets by corporates, presents Europe with a useful analogy. The caja banks in Spain were regionally focused and regionally driven, and they made huge investments in regional projects, but they have been a disaster and brought the Spanish economy crashing down. I acknowledge the historical success of Sparkassen and Landesbanken in Germany, but I fear that what happened to them during the crisis could happen elsewhere. The inability of Landesbanken to get local lending projects that more than met its cost of capital meant that it ended up taking on very risky investments in Europe, which helped to precipitate the Eurozone crisis
Jeremy Quin
As the hon. Gentleman says, the wrong kinds of bonds in the wrong kinds of markets also inflated the credit bubble.
I fear that there are no overseas alternatives that would act as a panacea. There is no reason why we should not do something by ourselves, but I am worried that it would be a distraction at a time when we really want money to be flowing out of banks and into the real economy. For that reason, no matter how lonely it makes me, I oppose the motion.
Mr Baker
I banged on in the last Parliament about the IFRS and their shortcomings. Indeed, I introduced a Bill to require parallel accounts to use the UK generally accepted accounting principles, precisely because I think there is a serious problem. I refer the House to Gordon Kerr’s book “The Law of Opposites”, published by the Adam Smith Institute, which not only covers this problem in detail, but explains how it feeds into the problem of derivatives being used specifically to manufacture capital out of thin air to circumvent regulatory capital rules. That is an extremely serious problem that might mean that the entire banking system is in a far worse place than we might otherwise think.
Jeremy Quin
I am genuinely curious about what my hon. Friend is saying. A lot of work was done on the balance sheet of RBS at the time of the asset protection scheme. Does he not think that any accounting issues would have been picked up at that stage?
Mr Baker
As I said earlier, we compared the asset protection scheme’s accounts with those of RBS and found a £20 billion difference in capital. When I write to my hon. Friend with the details from the IMF, I will introduce him to the people who did that work. I would be glad to sit down with him and my advisers and see what he thinks, because I recognise and respect his vast experience. I am, of course, only a humble engineer who sat in banks asking people how the system worked and found that they often could not tell me.
These concerns are not ones that I have made up. I have in my hand a letter from the Local Authority Pension Fund Forum that explains to our commissioner at the European Union in considerable detail over eight pages what is wrong with the IFRS. I would be pleased to share that with Members who are interested.
I am extremely uncomfortable with the idea that we understand the true and fair position of RBS, or indeed any other banks, because of the imposition of the IFRS. Particularly in relation to RBS, that has meaningful consequences when it comes to thinking about selling the shares. There are also consequences that we should consider when any consideration is given to paying out dividends.
Secondly, I want to raise Professor Kevin Dowd’s extended criticisms of the stress tests. He has made the point to me that under the 2014 stress tests, RBS had a projected post-stress, post-management action ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets of 5.2%. That was sufficiently poor that the bank was required to take further action on its capital position. Of course, it now wants to hand out dividends. That seems to both of us to make no sense. He continued:
“This 5.2% ratio compares to the 4.5% hurdle the Bank used, which is actually less than the 7% imposed on UK banks last year, and much less than the 8.5% to 11% minimum that will be imposed when Basel III is fully implemented in 2019.”
The range arises because of the counter-cyclical capital buffer. That is rather bizarre because it appears that RBS did not meet the Bank of England’s minimum requirements in the stress tests.
I am afraid that it gets worse. Because market events do not follow a normal distribution, there are severe problems with the risk-weighted assets measure that perhaps even render it useless. Therefore, the only measure that really makes sense is the leverage ratio, which is the ratio of capital to total assets, with none of the risk weighting. Under Basel last year, the absolute minimum leverage ratio was 3% and the Bank of England expected UK banks to meet that minimum. That 3% minimum was low. Some of my advisers suggest that a minimum of 15% is necessary, and possibly even double that for the bigger banks. That would be a radical departure. What did RBS achieve under the stress tests? It achieved 2.3%.
I am grateful for the work of Kevin Dowd, Gordon Kerr and John Butler at Cobden Partners on the IFRS and the stress tests. The problems that they have put in front of us are potentially extremely severe. I encourage the Government to meet my colleagues, to look at this matter again in great detail and to understand what has happened with this accounting, so that they can see what it means for our ability to see the true position of banks and how it incentivises structures that we subsequently find, as was pointed out earlier, are of no social value—structures that often serve to deceive and to create an impression of capital where there is none.
It is highly unlikely that RBS is in the state it appears to be in, and I agree with those who have called for diversity in ownership models. The challenges of providing those diverse banks out of RBS in its current condition are probably insurmountable, and I would welcome Government policy action to encourage mutuals and co-operatives. Above all, I encourage the Government to take all possible steps to establish the true position of RBS and the entire banking system, by comprehensively investigating the flaws in IFRS that have been well set out.
Ian Blackford
I thank my hon. Friend.
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Edmonton (Kate Osamor) for securing this important debate, and I commend the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) who provided the House with great detail about how he views the financial issues surrounding the Royal Bank of Scotland.
We keep hearing from the Government about their long-term economic plan, but to have any kind of effective economic plan we need a dynamic banking sector that is fit for purpose and engages in appropriate and responsible consumer and business lending. It is therefore important that we pay cognisance to what is happening to the money supply, and in particular the definition of broad money or M4.
Figures released by the Bank of England for the year to end September 2015 are a cause of some concern. Money supply fell by 0.6%, although I concede that that was largely a result of a fall in wholesale deposits. Worryingly, however, lending fell by 0.1%. There is concern that availability to bank lending for businesses and consumers is running below the rate that can be considered sustainable, and certainly below the level that is consistent with the delivery of sustainable economic growth.
There is also a legitimate debate about what kind of lending we should have, and about interaction with savers—many speakers have already raised that point. We must encourage industrial and commercial investment that focuses on innovation and skills, driving up wages and living standards, and we must have less focus on consumer debt. In Scotland, Scottish Enterprise has a limited but successful investment bank, and we must consider how to support and grow that model elsewhere in the UK.
Jeremy Quin
I am grateful to be called an hon. Friend by the hon. Gentleman. I accept his point about the types of lending taking place. Does he share my concern that in making many banking decisions, bankers enjoy having an asset that they can grab hold of—a house, perhaps, or something that they can see, touch and feel? We are considering cash-flow projections. Perhaps this issue comes down to the heart of training inside banks, because to be comfortable with some of the new technologies and innovations, they must be able to understand those cash-flow projections exactly.
Ian Blackford
I agree with the hon. Gentleman and I could probably bang on about that issue for a considerable time. He is right. Banks that are lending, particularly to the business community, must understand the businesses to which they are lending. Too often that has been done by matrix, spreadsheets and ticking boxes, and not through a clear understanding of where the growth opportunities are in the economy. That must change, which is why I referred to the investment bank in Scottish Enterprise. We need sectoral skills and an understanding of where growth opportunities are in the economy. There must be more of an alignment of the interests of the country, the Government and the banks, and an appreciation of what we need to do to deliver long-term and sustainable growth.
Ian Blackford
I confess that I am not aware of the individual rates charged, but the investment bank in Scottish Enterprise is quite constrained by its access to capital. I hate to make this point, but if the Scottish Parliament had more powers, it would increase our ability to ensure that that investment bank was properly funded.
We all understand the importance of improving capital ratios and establishing a more sustainable banking platform, but at the same time there has been a choking-off of credit to businesses and consumers, restraining our ability to grow our economy. The need for quantitative easing was clear, but it is right to ask how wider society has benefited from the Bank of England’s £375 billion asset purchase scheme.
Quantitative easing demonstrably helped the banks, but it has not fed through to greater activity to help the wider economy. If we contrast that with the pre-financial crash period between 2006-8, we see that M4 was increasing at an annual rate of close to 15%—levels that should have made alarm bells ring in the Government and the regulator at that time. Today we are living with the consequences of that failure, and that is why we are having this debate. The issue of banks being too big to fail, and the dislocation that took place in our economy as a result of the financial crisis, meant that the public were, rightly, angry at the behaviour of those responsible. We cannot and must not return to the circumstances that led to that crisis.
Of course, none of this was unprecedented. There was a significant banking crisis in the UK in the 1870s. It took a long time to recover from that crisis, and at the time it led to substantial change. In the US the Glass-Steagall Act was introduced in 1933. It prohibited commercial banks from participating in investment banking after the excesses of the 1920s, and that legislation remained in place until repeal under President Clinton. The Glass-Steagall Act was introduced for good reasons, and in my opinion its repeal added to the toxic cocktail that led to the financial crisis of 2007-08. In that context it is right to debate the relationship between commercial and investment banking, although we seem to have settled on ring-fencing as a solution to the challenges.
I understand why many people have supported ring-fencing, and perhaps it is worthy of ongoing debate. We know, however, that investment banking was not the only source of the financial exuberance that brought our economy to its knees. It is worth remembering that Northern Rock was the first failure in this country. That bank had absolutely no exposure to investment banking, and, as was the case elsewhere, simple bad practice—or indeed malpractice—was the issue. We must ask whether it is necessary or appropriate for our commercial banks, such as Royal Bank of Scotland, to engage in investment banking. There is no question but that we need a thriving investment banking industry in this country, and it remains today a source of jobs and wealth. The critical question, however, is whether such practices are appropriate for our high-street banks.
Jeremy Quin
I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman referred to the Overend and Gurney banking crisis of the 1870s and—this follows on from the remarks by my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker)—I believe it was only because of that crisis that banks had to report their accounts at all. Before that, such disclosure was regarded as rather a bad thing for a bank to do, because people might not trust it if it had to state exactly what its assets were.
On the investment banking arm of the Royal Bank of Scotland, does the hon. Gentleman think it appropriate for a commercial bank to provide investment banking capabilities to its corporate clients? There are many legitimate things about investment banking, such as foreign exchange providing support for exports, and derivatives are not always a bad thing—there are things they can do to help the export industry. There may be a synergy there, and I would be interested to hear the hon. Gentleman’s remarks.
Ian Blackford
I appreciate that there is an issue regarding what can be defined as investment banking. Of course corporate banking clients at RBS would require some of those facilities, but it is a question of how it is done.
On 13 October the headline on the BBC was “Will Barclays make another push into Casino banking?” That is the real issue. We can debate and discuss the frailties that still exist in the Royal Bank of Scotland, and what it needs to do to improve its balance sheet, but when banks are in a better position than they are today and have strengthened balance sheets, what would prevent the likes of RBS—even in a ring-fenced scenario—from putting additional capital into investment banking? That is the problem. Over the past two or three decades the seductive charms of investment banking have led to investment banks going down that road. We must be careful about that and debate the best way we in Parliament can ensure effective regulation. It never worked. It was a fantasy. Sad to say, it could become a fantasy for many more in the years to come. We do not need our high-street banks to become casino banks, and if necessary we will need legislation to enforce that. Lessons must be learned. No more can the country be held to ransom.
I am conscious that others wish to speak, so in the short time I have left let me turn specifically to RBS. I want to see RBS back in private hands, but not at any price. As the motion sets out, there ought to be a wider review of the UK financial sector. We own RBS collectively and we have a duty of stewardship to make sure that it is fit for purpose for the decades to come. There needs to be a debate on this before the Treasury and UKFI unwind our position. We have a duty, having bailed RBS out, to get the best value for the taxpayer. I am delighted to support the motion.
Jeremy Quin
Does the hon. Gentleman accept, though, that there have been dramatic changes in the regulatory environment? Happily, we will not be returning to 2003, because of the ring-fencing that has been introduced and the extra capital: RBS now has a capital base of 16%. Have there not been improvements in that respect?
Clive Lewis
I think that there have been changes, but as I said earlier, in an intervention, the fact that RBS is back again, and possibly about to be investigated for yet more fraud, does not exactly encourage me to think that those changes have been deep enough.
As I was saying, the sale of RBS was announced not to Parliament, but to a white-tie dinner full of City grandees, in a speech that also promised the City a “new settlement” on financial regulation. We are now starting to see what that “new settlement” looks like, with the Government caving in to economic blackmail from the likes of HSBC, which threatened to move its headquarters unless key post-crisis measures such as the bank levy and the ring fence between retail and investment banking were watered down—that, I think, answers the point made by the hon. Member for Horsham (Jeremy Quin); with the competition authorities ruling out action to break up big banks, even though they acknowledge that their customers are getting a raw deal; and with rumours that the Chancellor personally arranged the sacking of Martin Wheatley, the head of the Financial Conduct Authority, who has a reputation for being tough on bank misconduct.
Some commentators have even suggested that the Government’s desire for a quick sale of RBS is partly responsible for their magnanimous attitude towards the big banks: that the Government do not want to do anything that could damage the bank’s share price in the short term. If that were true, it would be incredibly short-sighted. We would effectively be trading in the chance to build a genuinely safer banking system in our haste to return to the pre-crisis status quo.
Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton (Kate Osamor) on securing this debate, and thank the Backbench Business Committee for giving Members time to discuss this important and topical issue in the Chamber. I am pleased that so many have taken part. It is a real pleasure to join the Minister and to respond on behalf of the Opposition for the first time in the Chamber.
We have discussed a proposal that asks the Government to consider suspending the further sale of their shares in RBS while a review is conducted of the UK’s financial sector and the case for new banking models. It is a simple motion and all Opposition Members support it.
This discussion of the causes and consequences of RBS’s bail-outs and of the Chancellor’s ongoing plans to sell off RBS, with a resulting cost to the taxpayer, has also been an excellent opportunity to discuss the future of RBS and of British banking as a whole, including the new models and structures that may benefit the British economy. The Government must engage in this debate, as my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham and Rainham (Jon Cruddas) so effectively set out in his speech.
Labour Members want a thriving and dynamic banking sector that will best deliver for the economy and the electorate as a whole. In government, Labour decided to bail out RBS. That was a big decision—a £45 billion decision—but it was the right one given the calamitous situation in RBS, which my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich South (Clive Lewis) outlined so effectively. According to the National Audit Office, the decision was justified, and the price was backed by Institute for Fiscal Studies, but the scale of the bail-out—the money invested on behalf of the taxpayer—means that we cannot so lightly take a simple decision to return to business as usual.
The Chancellor argued in his Mansion House speech earlier this year that
“the easiest path for the politician is to put off the decision”.
I believe that the Chancellor has taken the easy decision to return, as I have said, to business as usual. The former shadow Chancellor my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) said at the time that
“taxpayers who bailed out the bank will want their money back… The Chancellor needs to justify his haste in selling off a chunk of RBS”.
Both those points still stand: taxpayers still want their money back, and the Chancellor must still justify his haste.
Let us be clear that we cannot afford to get this sale wrong. The evidence of the Move Your Money poll, which was presented to us in the media this morning and by my hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton, shows that the public think the Government are getting it wrong: 82% of those polled agree, given their own interest as the majority shareholder in RBS, that this should operate in the public interest, and 58% believe that the bank should be restructured to serve local economies throughout the UK.
Richard Burgon
No, because I want to give the Minister as much time as possible to respond.
It is incumbent on the Minister and the Chancellor to set out why they are moving ahead with the sale. What evidence does the Minister have that it is the right thing to do? This is the first opportunity for a full parliamentary debate on the decision of the Chancellor to privatise RBS since his announcement to the City at the Mansion House in June. He did make a statement the following day, but informing the House was clearly something of an afterthought, as my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) clearly spelled out. At the Mansion House, the Chancellor announced a share sale even if it meant a financial loss to the taxpayer. The 5% stake sold on 3 August has already realised a loss of £1 billion, and some calculations suggest that the total losses if the entire stake is sold in this way could be about £13 billion, which is almost a third of the £45.5 billion total cost of the bail-out.
The Government have provided no real evidence of why RBS should be returned to the private sector in its previous form or why it should happen now. A 13-page report by the Rothschild Group and a two-page letter from the Governor of the Bank of England have been mentioned. The authors of the Rothschild report stressed that they had
“not sought to address the question of whether the government should sell its stake in RBS, but rather when it should do so.”
In other words, the review did not consider the full range of policy options. Will the Minister elaborate on how moving RBS shares from public to private ownership will promote financial stability, and on whether the relevant Bank of England Committee has endorsed that view? Will she publish any evidence she has received in support of that view?
It is welcome that the right hon. Member for Chichester (Mr Tyrie), the Chair of the Treasury Committee, has asked to see the advice provided by UKFI to ensure that the taxpayer, as shareholder, is getting good value from this Government-owned company. I support that call. Is the timing of this sale in the interests of taxpayers or bank customers, or does the Chancellor just want to sell off another state asset quickly to make his borrowing figures look better? Was this decision taken purely for ideological reasons, or is it based on expert, independent advice? Will the Minister explain how the Chancellor arrived at his decision? In line with the call by my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman), will the Minister share the evidence, if she has any, with Members of the House?
I will turn to alternative models and structures for RBS and the future of British banking. I ask the Government to consider undertaking a full review of UK banking that questions how financial institutions have operated before and since the crash, and what other models might be considered to diversify the sector and deliver for the country by strengthening the economy.
There has been a much needed discussion of banking practices and reform over the past five years. We have had Lawrence Tomlinson’s report, Sir Andrew Large’s report on RBS’s independent lending, Sir John Vickers’ Independent Commission on Banking, and the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards and the work of the Treasury Committee, both under the excellent leadership of the right hon. Member for Chichester, to name but a few.
Given how badly things went wrong and the problems that still exist at the bank, the question we must discuss today is how we can do it better. We need to know not only why RBS failed, but whether it is delivering for the British economy now, and, if it is not, how we can do it better.
Labour was right to bail out RBS, but how has it operated since the Government became the majority shareholder? RBS has been bailed out, but there are still major problems with its operation, as the hon. Member for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb) indicated in his speech. It has cut more than 30,000 staff since 2008, many of whom were backroom staff on about £20,000 per year. It is closing branches faster than any other bank, and 90 of those it has closed this year were the last branch in town.
The Tomlinson report said in 2011:
“Returning RBS and Lloyds to full private sector ownership in their current form would be a return to the banking landscape of 2003, possibly with even less competition… Given the lack of any real change in the banking sector, there is nothing that will stop 2018 being the same as 2008 unless radical action is taken now.”
The Andrew Large report found that RBS was failing SMEs. He said:
“A perception has risen among some SMEs that RBS is unwilling to lend.”
I want to take this opportunity to touch on how RBS has been treating businesses. The House will recall the Backbench Business debate on 4 December last year on the Financial Conduct Authority redress scheme, in which hon. Members raised the serious concerns of businesses. My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram) stated:
“The only thing that is consistent and transparent is that the banks that caused the financial crash are profiting from selling products such as interest rate hedging products, which were bought by a company in my constituency, the Flanagan Group, and have caused it great difficulty.”
Similarly, my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Paul Farrelly) talked about one of his local businesses, DK Motorcycles, which had been “badly let down” by RBS, but had
“finally escaped the clutches of RBS”.
He talked about
“people from small businesses who feel bullied by their banks”.—[Official Report, 4 December 2014; Vol. 589, c. 480-84.]
Information that I have seen this week shows that the serious concerns of businesses such as Flanagan’s have not gone away. I therefore want to take this opportunity to ask the Minister whether she will meet me, concerned MPs like my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton and businesses such as the Flanagan Group in his constituency to discuss the behaviour of RBS and what can be done to resolve the situation.
That leads me to the question that was put so well by my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey) of whether selling RBS in its current form represents good long-term value for the taxpayer, taking into account all the economic costs and benefits. Is the Minister aware of those who say that the low price of RBS shares represents a belief among market participants that the reforms to guarantee its future financial health have not yet been concluded? Is the Minister satisfied that all necessary steps have been taken to return RBS to a state where it will not be in trouble again? Finally, is the economy best served solely by private shareholder banking, or is there a case for a more diversified sector that includes publicly owned and directed institutions, mutuals, co-operatives, social enterprises and regionalised banking? With so many fundamental questions yet to be answered, it is right that we engage in a wider review of the UK’s financial sector that considers the case for establishing new models of banking that might better serve our economy.
In conclusion, there are many alternatives. It has been proposed from a number of quarters that RBS be broken up to deliver regional banks, including by the Tomlinson report, the New Economics Foundation, Civitas and ResPublica, as Opposition Members have mentioned. We must discuss how regional banks can help to rebalance the economy—perhaps the Chancellor took the opportunity while visiting Germany to look into that.
It is our responsibility to map out the best way forward for UK banking, so that it delivers for the electorate and the economy as a whole. That means suspending sales of shares in RBS, which give away taxpayers’ money to private shareholders. It is incumbent on the Chancellor to explain why he thinks that is the right thing to do, and that means engaging with a real review of the banking sector and alternative models that will deliver a diversified and more resilient economy. How we treat RBS now will demonstrate whether we have learned the lessons of the crisis—